Obama, the nation's CEO

President Obama, with seven days of unprecedented market intervention capped by Monday’s ultimatum to U.S. automakers, has made one thing emphatically clear: He is the most powerful player in American business today.

Obama’s move to oust the CEO of GM and put Detroit on notice that he is prepared to let icons of American industry fail if they refuse to bend to his will was a calculated attempt to send a message, said an official often consulted by the administration. And that message was unmistakable: In any business-government partnership, Obama himself expects to play the dominant role.

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“He’s realizing, ‘Hey, the economy’s mine now, and I better do it my way,’” said the official. “So the administration is collaring people and letting them know who’s in charge. The days of saying, ‘It’s not our economy’ have come to an end.”

An Obama administration official said the president’s hard-nosed approach will continue. “We’re not going to reward failure,” the official said. “We’re in an economic crisis, which takes shared responsibility and shared sacrifice. The only way that we will recover is if everybody puts a little skin in the game.”

Officials said the evolution of Obama’s increasingly tough tactics has been partly human: He became exasperated when bailed-out banks continued buying planes and paying bonuses at a time when so many people were losing jobs. He took it as a slap in the face — and knew that Americans seeing it on TV would, too.

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In a 150-hour period, starting last Monday, Obama put the government in the business of partnering with investors to buy up $1 trillion in high-risk bad assets. The move single-handedly caused a market rally and breathed life into bank stocks.

His administration then called for a whole new set of government regulations for high-flying hedge funds and other financial institutions. If successful, he will be the first president with the power to take over not only banks but also other financial firms, including big insurance companies (take that, AIG).

At week’s end, the president hauled in CEOs of big banks and later said he had lectured them on how to run better and more trusted businesses.

Most amazingly, he then pushed out Rick Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors, and vowed to let Chrysler fail if it didn’t merge with another company within a month.

Taken alone, the moves are remarkable. Taken together, they amount to a major exercise of presidential power — the imperial presidency applied to the economy to a sweeping degree not seen in decades.

“The message from the Obama administration to the auto industry is loud and clear: Restructure or die,” Harvard Business School’s Rosabeth Moss Kanter said in POLITICO’s Arena discussion. “If the government invests or lends, then, like any bank or investment group, it can demand accountable leadership that can deliver performance.”

But Obama’s move, particularly his dramatic ultimatum to Detroit, puts government in a role better performed by the private sector.

Said David Boaz of the Cato Institute in The Arena: “Rick Wagoner may be a bad CEO, or he may be a victim of difficult conditions facing the legacy auto industry. In either case, board members and investors are the right people to make that decision. I don’t know who should run GM, and neither does President Obama.”